No Picture with Quicktime

[EclecticLaundry]

I am working with a MacBook and video taken on my Casio Exilim point-and-shoot camera. The file extension is .avi for the videos. Yet when I open them in Quicktime, I get audio but no video. Ideas? Suggestions? TIA!

 

[MacHeadCase]

Welcome to Mac-Forums, EclecticLaundry.

Maybe you are missing on a certain codec? Maybe you can check out Apple's Knowledge Base article, QuickTime: About Playing .AVI Files.

Or you can look at XLabs' Playing AVI and DivX files for further info and links.

 

[EclecticLaundry]

Thank you. Yes, after doing some reading, that does sound like I'm missing a codec. When I bring up the movie info, it says this next to format: "M4S2", 640x480, Millions DVI ADPCM, Mono, 44.100 kHz. Do you know which part is the codec so I can try to find it?

 

[MacHeadCase]

Hah! Guess what? It's a Micro$oft codec? Or Casyo? Anyway, not sure if that M$ codec will run on OS X but maybe the best alternative is this: EX_M4S2. Caught this off of O'Reillynet.

Try it and report back. Good luck!

 

[EclecticLaundry]

Figures. I don't find Macs difficult (brand new user here!), but things like this give me a headache. It's not like I can buy a new camera!

Anyway, I found a solution, which was to download the VLC media player. The files work fine with that. I tried downloading the EX_M4S2 and installed it per directions, but still no video in Q.

 

[EclecticLaundry]

Ah! I had to restart the computer so I could empty my trash (for some reason it won't always let me empty trash if I have recently used something that is in the trash). And I decided, just for the heck of it, to try opening with Q again. It worked! I'm not sure which solution fixed it, because I tried downloading the DVI player as well as the codec you supplied, but I don't care as long as it works! Thanks!

 

[MacHeadCase]

Ah well see? After installing the codec, maybe you needed the restart to let the system know the codec had been installed and to let it identify it.

Cool that it now works.

About the files you cannot delete right away sometimes... This usually happens when the associated application is still running: you cannot delete the file till the app is quit (Command + Q).

 

[EclecticLaundry]

About the files you cannot delete right away sometimes... This usually happens when the associated application is still running: you cannot delete the file till the app is quit (Command + Q).

This has happened even after I quit the app, but I read somewhere that it can happen sometimes and to just try restarting. So far it's worked. It generally only happens with recently downloaded items that appear as drives or are .dmg files. *shrug*

Thanks again!

 

[MacHeadCase]

No problem, glad I could help.

And yes sometimes a restart is needed because there is a persistent temp file somewhere. Since this is not widespread behaviour in OS X, I suspect, in these have-to-restart situations, sloppy coding.